Abstract
We use a detailed study of the reasons behind significant changes in Conservative Party immigration policy over a half a century to see if they can be explained by the three most commonly cited drivers of party change. We find that electoral ‘shocks’ matter but that leaders matter most, while factional turnover is less important than is often thought. We also conclude that any theory of party policy change also needs to take more seriously (a) the requirement on parties to react to events in the ‘real world’, particularly when they are in government and (b) the fact that, in a competitive democracy, politicians are ideologically and instrumentally motivated to continuously monitor and then to reflect public (and party) feeling, and that this may be every bit as important as the periodic signals that they are sent at elections. This accords with recent cross-national research on parties’ policy changes – research which suggests that election results are less likely to trigger changes than are shifts in public opinion. That said, we also observe significant shifts occurring even when there is broad consonance rather than a marked contrast or mismatch between the electorate’s and the party’s preferences.
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Notes
Details of the sources used in Bale (2012), which covers organisational, personnel and policy change in the Conservative Party during the period 1945-1997 can be found on the following pages, all of which contain footnotes which allow readers to trace either original archival sources or more detailed primary and secondary sources, which are not themselves cited here in order to make the most of limited space: Commonwealth Immigrants Act (1962) 70, 127; immigration and asylum (seekers) 92, 95, 96, 104, 124, 127–128, 129, 131, 137, 142–144, 152, 161, 163, 181, 186, 208-209, 216, 224, 237–239, 271, 293, 298, 300, 301, 306, 310-311, 311; asylum seekers 271; citizens and citizenship 70–71, 73, 95, 128, 163, 183, 204, 208; ethnic minorities 143, 194, 217, 238, 249; race relations, general 96, 128, 137, 142–145, 148, 206, 217, 224-225, 238, 310, Race Relations Bill (1965, 1968) 142–143, 145. To take one example, Heath’s handling of the immigration issue between 1968 and 1970 is referred to on pp. 143-144, the footnotes for which (notes 67-70) refer both to more detailed published sources but also to Shadow Cabinet minutes in the Conservative Party Archive, held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford in file CPA LCC 1/2/1, 10, 11 and 12. By the same token sources for the period 1997-2010 are provided in more detail in Bale (2011), which provides a general account of the Party’s long years in opposition but contains some discussion en passant of immigration and asylum (pp. 102–103, 108, 113–114, 117–118, 120–123, 125, 130, 156–157, 160, 171, 173, 176, 179, 181, 197, 207–208, 209, 211, 213, 223, 236, 240, 242, 244, 247, 251, 256, 319, 358, 373, 397, 405–406, 409) and Bale et al (2011), which provides a more detailed discussion policies in recent years. The framework explored here is not employed in that book or in that journal article. The framework is employed in Bale (2012) but in order to discuss party change more generally. Bale (2013) covers immigration and asylum over the entire twentieth century and therefore inevitably touches on some of the same material. However, it does not apply the same framework nor does it proceed chronologically, working instead through three themes (public opinion, leaders’ personal views, and whether the Party was in government or opposition) in order to explore both its increasingly restrictive stance and why its tendency to use populist language varied considerably.
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Bale, T., Partos, R. Why mainstream parties change policy on migration: A UK case study – The Conservative Party, immigration and asylum, 1960–2010. Comp Eur Polit 12, 603–619 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2014.21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2014.21